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Bailey, M. (2006), Shopping centres and sustainability: the localisation of consumerism in community life. International journal of environmental, cultural, economic and social sustainability, 2(2), 85-94.

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Shopping Centres and Sustainability The Localisation of Consumerism in Community Life Matt Bailey, Macquarie University, Australia

Abstract: This paper examines the conjunction of commodity consumption with social life in suburban Sydney, Australia through a focus on major shopping centre development. It briefly traces the history of consumer culture, before turning its attention to the the emergence of the shopping centre as an historical form. Using case studies, it examines the way that these highly commercialised sites came to form central hubs of community activity in Sydney during the post-war period. By sketching the history of this process it offers some insight into the way that commodity consumption has become so central to our everyday lives, and why changing our consumer lifestyles requires more than just a change of sentiment, and must consider the infrastructure and environment in which we live, work and shop.

Keywords: Sustainability, Shopping Centre, Retail, Consumerism, Local, History, Community

HIS PAPER BEGINS with the premise, recognise that a number of historians situate it within recognised by the United Nations Division the context of a series of technical, economic and Tfor Sustainable Development, that the cultural changes that occurred in Western Europe consumption practices of industrialised and America through the course of the latter countries underlie many of the sustainability issues nineteenth-century.2 Industrialisation allowed mass of the non-industrialised world, including produced goods to be made and sold more quickly environmental degradation and poverty.1 It continues and at a lower cost than their hand-made by briefly tracing a history of consumer culture, counterparts. A sceptical public’s resistance to the before focusing on a specific site of commodity new style of products was worn down by their distribution – the enclosed regional shopping centre. proliferation and cheaper prices.3 Department stores Using case studies, it examines the way that these grew out of smaller more specialised shops and, highly commercialised sites came to form central together with the great European arcades came to hubs of community activity in Sydney, Australia symbolise the material aspirations of a growing and during the post-war period. By sketching the history acquisitive middle-class.4 As the century wore on, of this process it offers some insight into the way an increasing emphasis on display and promotion, that commodity consumption has become so central most notable in the originating Bon Marche of Paris to our everyday lives, and why changing our and American department stores, continued the consumer lifestyles requires more than just a change transformation of shopping culture. A fledgling of sentiment, and must consider the infrastructure advertising industry sought to differentiate the and environment in which we live, work and shop. homogeneity of mass-produced goods by imbuing them with meaning beyond their mere utility, and A Brief Background History of Consumer fashion emerged to introduce a cultural obsolescence Culture to the production cycle.5 The birth date of consumer culture is an area of contestation within historical studies. For the purposes of this paper, however, it is suffice to

1 United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Division for Sustainable Development, Agenda 21: Chapter 4; Johannesburg Plan of Implementation, Chapter III, Changing unsustainable patterns of consumption and production, http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/documents/WSSD_POI_PD/English/POIChapter3.htm http://www.un.org.esa/sustdev/documents/agenda21/english/agenda21chapter4.htm 2 Kim Humphery, Shelf Life: Supermarkets and the changing cultures of consumption (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 25. 3 Michael Miller, The Bon Marché: Bourgeois culture and the department store, 1869-1920 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1981), p. 34. 4 Peter N. Stearns, Consumerism in World History: The global transformation of desire (New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 45; and see, Miller, The Bon Marché. 5 Richard H. Robbins, Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism (Needham Heights MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1999), pp. 5-14.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL, CULTURAL, ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY, VOLUME 2, NUMBER 2, 2006 http://www.Sustainability-Journal.com, ISSN 1832-2077 © Common Ground, Matt Bailey, All Rights Reserved, Permissions: [email protected] 86 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL, CULTURAL, ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY, VOLUME 2

Australian Retail History to boom in the 1950s, retail services jumped with it. A consumer sentiment had been growing before and The retail model of the department store and arcade during the war, and was encouraged after it by the travelled across cultural and economic bridges to spread of television and increasingly ‘Americanised’ Australia in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. The advertising that promulgated unified fashions in department stores sourced their goods from around clothing, home furnishings and other forms of the empire, while the arcades took on names from consumption.10 Initial uncertainty about the strength British social culture such as The Strand, The 6 of the new economy was challenged by the promise Victoria and The Imperial. The indigenous stores of lifestyles beyond previous expectations. Incomes followed a similar pattern of growth to their overseas stabilized, wages rose at unprecedented levels, and counterparts, expanding out of smaller stores to credit became more readily available for the purchase become great city emporiums in their own right. As of consumer goods11 - of which the automobile was in Europe, department stores sought to position the most highly prized. Between 1946 and 1961, themselves as providers of the ‘social and economic 12 7 motor vehicle registrations in Australia quadrupled. aspirations’ of the growing middle-income groups. And by 1962 one out of every three Australians North American commercialism in Australia was owned a car.13 heralded by the arrival of the self-service ‘chain’ Just as it had done in America, the car variety store – a new mark in retail innovation and fundamentally changed the social and physical the advance of mass-production. Where once a infrastructure of Australian cities.14 Suburbia was shop’s proprietor or his assistant had selected and both filled in and sprawled outwards to accommodate wrapped goods upon request, now customers made a population that sought affordable housing and their own selections, before carrying them to a which could now transport itself.15 City retailing cashier to tally the cost. Savings were made on labour declined under the strain of traffic congestion, with the reduction of staff; shops became larger and parking problems, the cost of public transport and the number of items available for purchase increased. the time frames involved in shopping a distance from Retailing skills shifted away from product knowledge 16 8 home. Local suburban shops that were built around towards marketing and managerial techniques. By public transport routes and a ‘walking clientele’ fell the mid-1930s Australia’s two biggest Chain variety by the wayside17 as cars sped by them to what has store operators, Coles and Woolworth’s, were firmly been termed the greatest revolution in retailing since established in the Eastern States, and Chains the department store - the enclosed regional shopping accounted for 27 percent of business in New South centre that catered for, and actively encouraged car Wales. Clusters of local shops and Chains formed usage. small shopping strips along the highways of major cities to cater for their growing suburban populations, and some department stores opened downsized Shopping Centres in Australia 9 branches in the larger suburbs. The internalised shopping centre in Australia was a Further expansion of big retail was slowed by the copy of the originating American model that had deprivations of the Depression and wartime been based on similar socio-economic conditions, restrictions. But when the post-war economy began as well as technical innovations in air-conditioning,

6 Westfield Holdings Ltd., The Westfield Story: the first 40 years (Sydney: Westfield Holdings, 2000), p. 4. 7 B.A.Grace (Managing Director of Grace Bros. Ltd. and President of the Retail Traders Association of N.S.W.), quoted in Australian Retailing, vol. 3, no. 1, April 1969, p. 7. 8 Humphery, Shelf Life, pp. 66-7. 9 Ibid., pp. 36-52. On the post-war extension of this policy, see, T.W. Beed, The Growth of Suburban Retailing in Sydney: a preliminary study of some factors affecting the form and function of suburban shopping centres, Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Art, The University of Sydney, for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Geography, March 1964, p. 169. 10 On Americanised advertising and consumer culture in Australia, see Hsu-Ming Teo, 'The Americanisation of romantic love in Australia', in Ann Curthoys and Marilyn Lake (eds.), Connected Worlds: History in Trans-National Perspective, (Canberra: ANU EPress, 2006), pp. 161-183. See also, Beverley Kingston, Basket, Bag and Trolley: a history of shopping in Australia (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 92-3. One department store advertising manager describing radio and television said: ‘Both have an excellent believability factor, with enormous potential for informing or amusing prospective customers.’ See, Michael Davenport (advertising manager, David Jones), quoted in Inside Retailing, no. 116, March 11, 1974, p. 4. 11 ‘In the mid-1950s… there was a rapid expansion in the availability of consumer credit.’ See, Graeme Davison, Car Wars: how the car won our hearts and conquered our cities (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2004), p. 15. 12 Ben Goldsmith, ‘The Comfort Lies in All the Things You Can Do: The Australian drive-in – cinema of Distraction’ in Journal of Popular Culture, 33(1), 1999, p. 156. 13 Davison, Car Wars, p. 15. 14 ibid., pp. 10, 76-81. 15 Goldsmith, The Comfort, p. 156. 16 Walter Bunning, ‘Store Changes in the Suburbs’ in The Retail Trader, vol. 40, no. 7, December 1959, p. 42. 17 Kingston, Basket, Bag and Trolley, pp. 92-94. MATT BAILEY 87

‘moving stairs’ and construction techniques. The increasing consumption of commodities, and reliance American expertise was openly and enthusiastically on the car to individually transport customers to the acknowledged within the industry literature. It was shop door.25 also cited as a source of credibility in advertising From early on, the internalised air-conditioned directed towards the general public,18 although centre surrounded by generous parking, laid out to research on other cultural products suggests that maximise the exposure of shops to shoppers whose Australian’s enthusiasm for the new centres was ‘traffic flows’ were regulated by the positioning of more likely an attraction to consumptive modernity major tenants, became the standard shopping centre than to distinctly American inflections of it.19 model.26 Within a few years complaints, even Advertising declared that the Australian shopper was amongst developers, began emerging about the standing at ‘the dawn of a new way of life’. ‘Space- homogeneity of designs.27 Whilst the mix of shops age’ retailing now offered a ‘future’ in which would be varied to suit local conditions28 or changing shopping would no longer be a ‘boring chore’ but a fashions, very little else in the design fundamentals pleasure.20 Promotions painted centres as ‘high was altered over geographic, social or temporal temples of modernity’21 – clean, safe, glitzy and distance.29 When the fashion designer Trent Nathan stylish: divorced from the chaos and uncertainty of said of a centre on Sydney’s North Shore that was the city, yet replete with all of its services and upgraded in the late 1990s: ‘Walk in here and you amenities.22 could be anywhere...’30, he was paying homage to Advances in air-conditioning over the preceding the centre’s internationality. But it was also an century meant that vast internal spaces could now inadvertent reminder of the standardisation of its be filled with brightly lit, ‘attractively displayed’ design, and the disconnection between its self- merchandise at an empirically tested level of contained internal world and its locale. consuming comfort - wherever the centre was located Australian shopping centres were built by national across the globe. Shopping would take place within companies along international guidelines. Although an ‘eternal springtime’ temperature of 72º F.23 Nature they included local businesses, they were in many had historically been seen as an unpredictable ways external cultural products to the environments impediment to retail activity, and now with the ability in which they were built. And their internalised to condition the interior, and the car to deliver nature ensured that a certain commercially customers to the shop front door, it could be largely advantageous separation continued. But they were excluded.24 This environmentally expensive also dependent upon local populations whose ‘retail architectural model has recently been recognised as dollar’ meant their survival and ultimately, their unsustainable, with research and some initial commercial success. Australian shopping centres development into alternative designs. But from the worked hard to dissolve this contradiction seeking business side these are still premised on the ever- to ‘localise’, or embed themselves within the

18 Peter Spearritt, ‘Suburban Cathedrals: The rise of the drive-in shopping centre’ in Graeme Davison, Tony Dingle and Seamus O'Hanlon (eds), The Cream Brick Frontier: Histories of Australian suburbia, (Clayton, VIC: Monash Publications in History, Dept. of History, Monash University, 1995), p. 99. 19 Richard Waterhouse, ‘Popular Culture’ in Phillip Bell and Roger Bell (eds), Americanization and Australia (Sydney: UNSW Press, 1998), p. 56. 20 Daily Telegraph, 9 September 1965 and Daily Mirror, 11 October 1965, quoted in Lindsay Barrett, ‘Roselands or Everything Under One Roof’ in UTS Review, vol. 4, no. 2, November 1998, pp. 124-5. 21 This phrase is borrowed from Goldsmith who uses it to describe another great American consumer cultural import to Australia – the drive-in theatre. See, Goldsmith, The Comfort, p. 154. 22 The image and function of centres was similar in America. See, Cohen, From Town Centre to Shopping Centre, p. 1056. 23 Centres were kept at a universal temperature of ‘spring’. See, Kingston, Basket, Bag and Trolley, p. 97; Sydney Morning Herald (advertisement), 20 September 1966, pp. 21,22; Sydney Morning Herald (Special Feature), 21 September 1966, p. 1. 24 Sze Tsung Leong and Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss, ‘Air Conditioning’ in Chuihua Judy Chung, Jeffrey Inaba, Rem Koolhaas, Sze Tsung Leong (eds) Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping (Köln: Taschen, 2001), p. 93. 25 See Destiny USA, http://www.destinyusa.com, and commenting on it, Grist Magazine, Environmental News and Commentary, http://www.grist.org/news/muck/2005/05/20/little-destiny/ 26 The Retail Trader, vol. 39, no. 8, March 1958, pp. 44-5; vol. 40, no. 5, December 1958, p. 42; vol. 41, no. 11, July 1960, p. 17. 27 Paul Edwards, ‘Reimagining the Shopping Mall: European Invention of the ‘American’ Consumer Space’ in U.S. Studies Online: British Association for American Studies Postgraduate Journal, Issue 7, Spring 2005, p. 9. For the fact that ‘no amount of sculpture or number of fountains in a plaza can offset the regimented look’, see excerpts from an address by William T. Snaith (President of the Raymond Loewy Corp., U.S.A) to the second annual convention of the International Council of Shopping Centres, in The Retail Trader, vol. 40, no. 2, September 1958, p. 43. 28 William Kowinski, The Malling of America: travels in the United States of shopping (United States: Xlibris Corp, 2002), p. 19. 29 That there is a focus is on creating a ‘global appeal…to a particular lifestyle.’ See, Nicholas Jewell, ‘The fall and rise of the British mall’ in The Journal of Architecture, vol. 6, Winter 2001, pp. 328, 335. 30 North Shore Times, 24 November 1999, p. 4. 88 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL, CULTURAL, ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY, VOLUME 2

communities in which they were situated.31 They values jumped and Gruen’s client, Dayton’s were in a powerful position to do so, with a marked department store, began selling off the surrounding absence of formal, centralised community space land, exacerbating rather than relieving suburban available in the rapidly sprawling suburbs. sprawl.34 Housing Commissions, providing public The internal designs of Gruen’s original grand residential development for the house-hungry plans were also compromised. The commercial population, had designed cohesive living potential of community space enclosed within environments but were limited by a dearth of funds privatised development was hard to resist, and was in the immediate post-war climate of scarcity. Plans quickly grasped both in America and Australia. In for integrated community centres combining the latter, development applications abounded with recreational, social, and educational activities public facilities that centres intended to provide – alongside child care and health services were shelved childcare, libraries, auditoriums and halls.35 But these in many areas because of their expense. Instead more rarely materialised,36 and where they did, an affordable, decentralised facilities such as sports economic scalpel paring off non-profitable functions fields, swimming pools, a scatter of libraries, and usually removed them from their host. Inside the the widely supported Baby Health Clinics dotted the industry, retailers were warned that community suburbs.32 Private housing developers saw little profit facilities could ‘drastically affect profits’ and that in community centres and owner builders, by they should ask themselves: ‘Will the feature we are definition, were acting as individuals. Shopping considering draw enough extra people to pay?’37 centres stepped into the void, offering community They were also reminded that once one community space, parking facilities, and a tailored array of organisation had been given access to a centre’s retailers and products, within a site that encapsulated facilities, ‘they all’ would want to do so. In America, and serviced the country’s growing consumer Gruen lamented the lost possibilities, bemoaning the sentiment. fact that only ‘those features which had proved profitable had been copied’ from his early designs.38 Shopping Centres as Community Hubs In Australia, there were even examples of centres displacing existing services. In 1975, retail The idea of large-scale shopping centres forming developers sought to purchase public land in community hubs was an intrinsic element in the Chatswood that at the time housed a Kindergarten, designs of their original architect in America, Victor a Senior Citizens Centre and a Community Aid Gruen. A critic of bland, amorphous suburban Centre. A resident’s committee claimed, additionally, sprawl, he envisaged shopping centres as but one that the development would restrict the capacity of part of an overall, modernist, suburban civic plan in the library to expand and increase traffic flows which people would live, shop, work, interact and around the Chatswood District Hospital, nearby create communities.33 This ideal was undermined schools and churches. Non-commercialised meeting during the development of his, and the worlds, very places including the Old Town Hall, the School of first fully internalised centre, Southdale. It opened Arts and the Dispensary Hall’ were also to disappear in October 1956 in Minneapolis and was situated in the wake of the proposed centre.39 Despite strong within 500acres of proposed, integrated development. local opposition, the land was sold (and soon With the centre built, however, surrounding land afterwards on-sold at a considerable profit),40

31 On the process of localization, see Terence Chong, ‘Chinese Opera in Singapore: Negotiating Globalisation, Consumerism and National Culture’ in Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 34(3), 2003, p. 453. For the process of American localisation in Australia, see Ben Goldsmith, ‘The Comfort Lies in All the Things You Can Do: The Australian Drive-in – Cinema of Distraction’ in Journal of Popular Culture, 33(1), 1999. 32 Allport, The Unrealised Promise, pp. 55-8. 33 Victor Gruen, and Larry Smith, Shopping Towns USA: The Planning of Shopping Centres (New York: Reinhold, 1960), p. 140, cited in Edwards, Reimagining the Shopping Mall, p. 5. On an Australian claim to provide such space, see Westfield, The Westfield Story, p. 34. 34 M. Jeffrey Hardwick, Mall Maker: Victor Gruen, Architect of an American Dream (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), pp. 53-6. 35 On Roselands see, The Retail Trader, vol. 44, no. 3, October 1962, p 6; vol. 46, no. 11, June 1965, pp. 4-5. 36 Kingston, Basket, Bag and Trolley, p. 98. 37 Peter Benjamin (Manager A. J. Benjamins Shopping Center, Top Ryde), addressing the 1958 Residential Conference of Retail Executives at Leura, in The Retail Trader, vol. 40, no. 5, December 1958, p. 42. 38 Victor Gruen, ‘The sad story of shopping centres’ in Town and Country Planning 46.7-8 (July/ August, 1978), pp. 350-353, quoted in Edwards, Reimagining the Shopping Mall, p. 10. 39 North Shore Times, 20 August 1975; P.B.R. Middleton (Convenor and Chairman of Citizens for Chatswood Community), letter to L.J. Woodward, Town Clerk, Willoughby Municipality, Chatswood, 8 September 1975, located in Willoughby Library Local Studies Section, Retail Trade – Chatswood Chase file. 40 Netting a profit, according to David Jones chairman K.W. Russell, of $3 million. See, North Shore Times, September 1981. MATT BAILEY 89

development proceeded and the services were successful strategy, increasing patronage, promoting scattered and shifted outside of the main commercial consumerist behaviour and drawing support from centre.41 Today, Chatswood is effectively one giant local populations through the demographically shopping centre with some of Australia’s highest targeted benefits that flowed back to at least some retail rentals.42 segments of the community. Over time, small-scale Despite its absorption by commerce, community promotions grew in size and strength in line with the space remained in the marketing rhetoric as a expansion of the centres they promoted. In some powerful means to embed centres within instances, localising campaigns became, a little communities. Centres were determined to establish ironically, nationwide promotional ventures. Three themselves as the suburban community space. In examples are given here to outline this marketing 1959, The Retail Trader had reminded its Australian trend. big business readership to: ‘…let the shadow of your Local newspapers can draw significant revenue institution fall over the length and breadth of your from shopping centre advertising. They have community for the base of that shadow will always traditionally been supportive of the ‘progress’ centres be rooted in your store.’43 This advice became bring to communities and are frequently used to run somewhat of a doctrine for shopping centre promotional devices disguised as news. In the 1970s, operators, and was reflected in their advertising for example, shopping centre giant Westfield ran a which frequently correlated their own icon of weekly column in the Hornsby local newspaper modernity with the ‘medieval market square’. This entitled ‘Westfield News’, which provided imagined historical image had apparently represented information to the community about the community. ‘the gayest time in trading’, where ‘a friendly It was largely, however, a promotional device for meeting place’ provided ‘a happy family Westfield itself, and more generally, consumerist atmosphere’.44 The Australian population embraced behaviour and the middle-class ‘values’ that the concept. Centres drew large crowds, operating shopping centres moulded themselves around. In one as ‘a link between the two great icons of suburban 1973 article, ‘roving reporter’ Ken Snell, declared living – the house and the car.’45 that Hornsby had become, ‘in the eyes of world But rather than enhancing community life, some travellers, the shopping Mecca of Australia. The have seen the conjunction of these icons as an great merchants of the Westfield Plaza’, he declared, unsocial union – a private journey from within the were ‘the major contributing factor’ to this house, within the car to the inward-facing shopping transformation, although ‘the dynamic leadership of centre. The resident’s committee protesting against the Hornsby Government and Council led by the further retail development in Chatswood in the mid distinguished Shire President, Don Evans, [and] the 1970s, challenged the ‘modern’ equation of efficient crime-fighting police department’ also got privatised commercial space with community space, a mention.47 pointing out that shoppers ‘park as near as possible Shopping centres also sought to associate to the particular substantial retail complex they intend themselves with existing community activities, in to visit, and on completion of their purchases there order to establish themselves as local institutions they… return immediately to their vehicles.’46 Such rather than mere sites of commerce. In the early shoppers did not engage with other local businesses, 1980s Chatswood Chase was built on the nor with the community locale more generally, Kindergarten site described above. After a successful instead confining their experience to their own initial year of trading, it planned a massive first private realm and the commodified space of the birthday promotional celebration, which it linked to centres. the 13th annual occurrence of a local festival. As reported by the neighbourhood paper (in which ‘the Marketing ‘Community’ Chase’ advertised heavily): ‘Chatswood Chase’s birthday and the 1984 Willoughby Festival have been As centres focused on the commercial side of their interwoven to give the community one giant business, they increasingly turned to marketing as a celebration’. The official openings of both were held means to create a community identity. It was a highly during Thursday night shopping on the Chatswood

41 North Shore Times, 13 August 1980. 42 According to Westfield Director David Lowy in the mid 1980s: ‘You will only find higher rents in the centre of Sydney or perhaps Melbourne’. See, North Shore Times, 9 July 1986. 43 The Retail Trader, vol. 40, no. 7, February 1959, p. 43. 44 Sydney Morning Herald (Special Feature), 21 September 1966, p. 1; The Retail Trader, vol. 47, no. 4, November 1965, p. 12; Westfield info-vertisement in The Advocate, 16 October 1968, p. 10. 45 Spearritt, Suburban Cathedrals, p. 88. 46 Middleton, letter to L.J. Woodward. 47 Advocate-Courier, 9 January 1974, p. 5. 90 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL, CULTURAL, ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY, VOLUME 2

Chase ‘centre stage’. As the paper went on to say: ones paying were the parents and friends of the ‘The linking of the two occasions indicates [how school who had made the purchases to earn the important] The Chase has become in the past 12 ‘reward’ points in the first place. In this light, Shop months to the day-to-day community life of the North for Your School appears as little more than a Shore… naturally birthday bargains at The Chase successful marketing tool, but its very success tells will be a feature’.48 The public facilities that had us something about the communities who embraced been displaced sat on the suburb’s outskirts looking it. Commerce is an intrinsic element of modern day- on. to-day life, and if it mediates community activity, Donations and promotions involving schools have that appears to be of no great concern for most of long been popular amongst centre operators. And it that community – especially if tangible benefits like is hard to think of an institution more central to school computer equipment can ice the social cake. community life. Schools are the site of care and education of the children, the future (even if The Perpetual Promotion of imagined), of the community. In the 1990s, Westfield Consumption began running what was probably the largest annual school-targeted campaign yet conceived by shopping At the same time as they were marketing themselves centre marketers in Australia. Nation-wide, it as ‘community centres’, shopping centres were also encouraged schools and their supporters to earn assiduously encouraging consumption more points through purchases at Westfield centres. The generally, and promoting to raise their profile and school in each local area that ‘earned’ the most increase turnover. The overheads, commercial points, through spending the most money, won tens interests and sheer scale of shopping centres, required of thousands of dollars worth of computer equipment a volume of sales far beyond those achievable by – a much needed boost in a time when public small independent operators. In order to generate education is under funded. ‘Bonus days’ on which these sales and to maintain their relative market customers could earn extra points coincided with position they used the authority of their ‘coercive, other promotional days such as Easter and Mother’s centralized’ management52 to engage in continuous, Day.49 Updates on each school’s position in the intensive advertising and promotion. Indeed this competition were regularly displayed in local approach was a definitive characteristic of the newspapers that enthused over the competition.50 ‘modern retailing’ that centres claimed to epitomise. Comments by the principal of a winning school Again, American ‘retailing experts’ in the late 1950s in 2003 indicated the commercial success and advised Australians in this regard: ‘localising’ force of the promotion: ‘Our Parents and The shopping centre developer of the past – a Friends Committee’, she said, ‘nominated a converted home builder usually, or even a lettuce coordinator who was responsible for informing farmer with well-located land – thought his work parents, and the wider community, about the school’s was over on opening day. He had a lesson to learn. progress, to encourage them to get involved. It was His centre requires 365 days of intensive promotion very much a community building exercise… The each year to gain and hold its position in the area it coordinator used the school’s newsletters to keep serves.53 parents up-to-date and to inform them of bonus Promotions began during development.54 Their weekends…’51 size and cost, as well as the ‘countless feats of The computer equipment was clearly, and engineering skill’ required for their construction, understandably, highly valued by the school, and by were lauded in local newspapers.55 A crescendo of putting it on offer, Westfield was able to penetrate advertising led to opening day, describing ‘armies’ the school’s local network and represent itself as a of workers fighting against the odds to have centres member of its community. It might look like entrance completed on time.56 Although fulfilling a clear to the community had been bought, except that the marketing function, the praise in these papers was

48 North Shore Times Weekend Edition (devoted to the ‘Birthday Celebrations’ including a full front page banner advertisement for Chatswood Chase), 11 March 1984, p. 18. 49 North Shore Times, 4 April 2001, p. 19; 6 June 2001, p. 25. 50 North Shore Times, 9 May 2001, p. 21; 19 May 2004, p. 29. 51 Ms Dianne Burgham, principal St Thomas Primary, Willoughby, quoted in Sydney Weekly Courier, 5 May 2004. 52 Cohen, From Town Centre to Shopping Centre, p. 1064. 53 James B. Douglas (President, Northgate, and Executive Vice-President, Bergen Mall Shopping Centers U.S.), ‘The Future of Regional Shopping Centres’ in The Retail Trader, vol. 39, no. 8, March 1958, p. 46. 54 Beginning promotion at this stage was a recommended strategy. See, Inside Retailing, no. 109, 21 January 1974, p. 10. 55 Barrett, Roselands, p. 125. 56 Sydney Morning Herald, 20 September 1966, p. 22. MATT BAILEY 91

genuine, reflecting the growing Australian attraction consumption practices within centres: ‘A store to Americanised modernity, and a confidence in its interior is like a stage’, retailers were told. ‘Its actors own ability to achieve it.57 are the goods on display; [while] the audience moves Constant, intensive promotion became a in and around the stage.’64 But as marketing theory fundamental ingredient as centres fought to secure developed through the decade, there was a subtle and extend their ‘dominance’ of local retail.58 shift in focus from the actors to the stage itself. Australian Prime Ministers and State politicians, Centres recognised the advantage of becoming ‘less celebrating ‘private enterprise at its best’,59 gave a storage place for goods and more and more a way official sanction to centres at grand opening days of communicating a certain way of life.’65 This life, that saturated the media.60 The coverage invariably above all, revolved around material consumption. reported large, enthusiastic and often hysterical And retailers eagerly, if with perhaps some biased crowds that became, in the words of Australian optimism, observed changing attitudes in the cultural studies writer Meaghan Morris, ‘a decorative shoppers who embraced it: ‘youthful in mind and feature of the shopping centre’s performance’.61 In spirit, increasingly affluent, [and] increasingly aware the following days, weeks and years, fashion parades of the [consumer] culture’ in which they lived. To and beauty pageants entertained the crowds with maintain their attraction to these shoppers, it was consumerist images, while mass specials occurred stated, retailers would ‘be forced as never before to with enough regularity to provide a permanent aura sell fashion… change, newly established fads and of value. Cross promoting their own or an employer’s obsolescence.’66 commercial ventures, celebrities of all mainstream makes and models made regular appearances. Joining Shopping Centres as Emblems of them were life-size cartoon characters, Olympians, Consumer Culture international sports people and television chefs. Orchestras and royal memorabilia made tours, as did As representatives of their commodified contents, giant robotic reptiles and museum exhibits. Easter centres themselves had to undergo continual cosmetic bunnies and Santa Clauses turned up annually62 and changes as they sought to physically embody the children’s entertainment was available during material ideals of their target demographic.67 They holidays. One promotion offered to help parents were, in a sense, ‘slaves to fashion’: required to be whose kids drove them ‘up the wall every school forever fresh, vibrant and new. Modern and exciting holiday’. Supervised children’s activities gave these when they burst upon the retailing scene in the late parents ‘three hours of undisturbed peace’… to 1950s and 1960s, they had to remain this way to shop.63 encourage and embody the consumerist lifestyle that The centre as a site of entertainment, and a leisure supported their business. All surviving major destination, became a key concept within the Australian shopping centres have been periodically industry. Echoing the rhetoric of the nineteenth updated to reflect changing fashions, continually century department stores, industry literature in the transforming to the ‘now’.68 The philosophy of the early 1960s used theatrical metaphors to describe shopping centre and consumption is built around

57 John Fiske, Bob Hodge and Graeme Turner, Myths of Oz: Reading Australian Popular Culture (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1987), pp. 104-5. 58 ‘With a large Super Prime regional like Bankstown you need to exploit its dominance as opposed to resting on its laurels’ Peter Smith (Managing Director of General Property Trust) quoted in Shopping Centre News vol. 4, no. 7, August 1989, 18. 59 New South Wales State Premier, Robert Askin, quoted in Bankstown Observer, 21 September 1966; Sydney Morning Herald, 20 September 1966, p. 4. 60 Goldsmith uses the term ‘officially sanctioned’ in relation members of government opening drive-in theatres, and the term holds equal relevance here. See, Goldsmith, The Comfort, p. 158. 61 Meaghan Morris, ‘Things To Do With Shopping Centres’ in Susan Sheridan (ed.) Grafts: Feminist Cultural Criticism (London: Verso, 1988), p. 217. 62 Sydney Weekly Courier, 9-15 April 2003; 17 March 2004; and North Shore Times, 3 February 1988; 19 May 1993; 16 July 1997. 63 Westfield 1 st Anniversary advertising pamphlet, 19 September 2002, p. 12, located in Hornsby Library local studies file. 64 Geoff Farries. ‘Shopping Centres: An Important Retail Trend’, Rydge’s, 1 August 1960, p. 795, quoted in Spearritt, Suburban Cathedrals, p. 99. 65 John S. Walton (Chairman of Executive Committee, Waltons Ltd.), ‘Retailing’s role in the future – and the customer of the 1970s’ in Australian Retailing vol. 4 no. 3, July 1970, p. 6. For a wider analysis of this marketing trend, see Naomi Klein, No Logo (London: Flamingo, 2001). 66 Walton, Retailing’s role in the future, pp. 4-5. 67 On Bankstown Square, see Peter Walichnowski (Director Lend Lease Retail), quoted in Shopping Centre News, vol. 4., no. 7., August 1989, pp. 18-9, and on Westfield Chatswood, see Sydney Weekly Courier, 25 July 2000. On the same phenomenon in Britain, see Jewell, The fall and rise of the British mall, p. 333. 68 A current Westfield television ad describes one of its centres as ‘The New’ Westfield Tuggerah, despite the fact that this centre has existed in its present location for some years. What Westfield means is that the centre has been re-vamped. It looks like ‘new’, or rather is the epitome of what Westfield is trying to define as ‘the new’. 92 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL, CULTURAL, ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY, VOLUME 2

obsolescence. Centres must constantly change their … ability to attract and hold trade.’72 This attitude physical appearance and image to stay one step ahead developed over time, with more refined marketing of it. And they rely upon the shifts of fashion to make terminology calling for attention to ‘concept, range, today’s product (both the centre itself, and the quality, fit-out, uniforms, packaging, [and] style’.73 merchandise within it) more attractive than Today Westfield offers ‘retailer education and yesterday’s. consultancy services’, including international ‘study This commercially and ideologically driven focus tours’, to encourage high levels of ‘performance’ on ‘the new’ is highlighted by the notable absence from its tenants.74 of second-hand shops in major Australian shopping The requirements that centres, and their large centres throughout the last fifty years. Not even up- institutional investors75 called for tended to favour market, expensive, profitable antique stores would Chains rather than local or independent stores, find a place. When charities have been given space because the former were considered to ‘have the to raise money within centres, it has been a condition financial backing, expertise and marketing skill to of their entry that they will not sell second hand items ensure success.’76 The support for Chains by the – traditionally a foundation of their fund-raising major shopping centres encouraged their already efforts.69 Second-hand goods are a distraction from, rapid growth that had begun early in the century. and are even subversive to the ideology of ‘the new’. Some potential problems associated with this growth They offer an alternative philosophy of consumption had been raised in the inter-war period by that undermines the mass-production obsolescence independent grocers in New South Wales who model on which the economics and very identity of appealed for a government inquiry into the unfair the ‘modern’ shopping centre are based. advantage that their size bestowed upon the Chains, and the low wages and cheap imported goods that The Control and Management of Tenants they favoured. The Chains, in response argued that they had ‘shown the consumer what [could] be The absence of second-hand shops in centres was expected from really modern retailing’ with the part of an entire system of control over tenants that ‘working classes’ welcoming their cheap ‘high was designed to maximise turnover and promote quality’ goods.77 The Inquiry sided with the Chains consumption. In the early days, before their although it reserved some criticism for their use of commercial power was firmly established, it was not juvenile labour and price-cutting policies.78 And as always easy for Australian centres to attract tenants, the supermarket and variety store Chains had spelt particularly major fashion stores that had a more the end for many small grocers before the war, the upmarket image than could be provided for.70 But rise of shopping centres saw the decline of many as they became more firmly entrenched in the cultural local shopping strips after it.79 An ‘aggressive’ style and economic infrastructure of the suburbs, centres of retailing, heavily backed by promotions and were able to become increasingly selective and advertising, that sought to continually push sales demanding. Industry commentators predicted this over and above the planned purchases of shoppers80 change, and its advantages.71 They advised centre became the retail standard. operators to examine a potential tenant’s ‘advertising budget, apparent aggressiveness, completeness of stock, reputation, merchandising ability, stability and

69 See, for example, Bill Shirley (Promotions Manager, Westfield Hornsby) in a letter to charity groups, 3 January 1983, located in Hornsby Library local studies file. 70 P.D. Yeomans, addressing the Golden Jubilee Convention of the Real Estate Institute of New South Wales, in The Retail Trader, vol. 42, no. 7, February 1961, p. 42. 71 James B. Douglas, (President, Northgate, and Executive Vice-President, Bergen Mall Shopping Centres U.S. By Courtesy of “Stores”), ‘The Future of Regional Shopping Centres’ in The Retail Trader, vol. 39, no. 8, March 1958, pp. 45-6. 72 P.D. Yeomans, addressing the Golden Jubilee Convention, p. 42. 73 Shopping Centre News, vol. 4., no. 7., August 1989, p. 20. 74 http://westfield.com/corporate/retailer/index.html 75 Cohen, From Town Centre to Shopping Centre, p. 1056. 76 G. Ritzer, The Macdonaldisation of Society (Thousand Oaks, CA, 1996), p. 29 cited in Malcolm Voyce, ‘The Privatisation of Public Property: The development of a shopping mall in Sydney and its implications for governance through spatial practices’ in Urban Policy and Research, vol. 21, no. 3, September 2003, p. 255. 77 Retail Merchandiser and Chain Store Review, May 1937, p. 6, quoted in Humphery, Shelf Life, p. 52. 78 ‘Chain Stores: Report of the Industrial Commission of New South Wales upon Matters Relating to the Management, Control and Operations of General Chain Stores in New South Wales’ New South Wales Parliamentary Papers, 1939 cited in ibid., p. 49. 79 Kingston, Basket, Bag and Trolley, p. 110. 80 ‘Impulse Buying: new assault on the consumer’ in The Retail Trader, vol. 40, no. 2, September 1958, p. 41. MATT BAILEY 93

Shopping Centres and Social Life interface between production and consumption, are a major channel for both of these activities and Marketing, through the course of the twentieth therefore require attention. This paper has outlined century, managed to tie individual identity to some of the ways in which shopping centres in consumption practices. Major shopping centres have 81 suburban Sydney, Australia embedded themselves sought to do the same with social identity. The within local communities. In doing so, they extent to which they have succeeded is obviously encouraged the attachment of consumption to social open to considerable debate, and the same issues of life. At the same time, they used constant and agency that occur in all cultural histories are equally intensive promotion to push the boundaries of applicable here. But centres have set themselves up consumption ever higher. as social hubs. They tend to force other local retailing The United Nations Conference on Environment into decline. They have the active public support of and Development in Rio de Janeiro declared that: politicians and local media. And they provide the ‘to achieve sustainable development and a higher only real centralised conglomeration of services, quality of life for all people, States should reduce shops, parking and recognised public space in the and eliminate unsustainable patterns of production suburban landscape. This combination of and consumption…’82 The UN’s Division for attractiveness and power, along with the broader Sustainable Development has declared that we need historical trend towards privatised consumer culture, to develop ‘new concepts of wealth and prosperity’.83 has enabled regional shopping centres to become a In order to achieve both of these goals we need to dominant social institution in suburban Australia. loosen the attachment of excessive consumption to Any attempt to deal with industrialised community and social life in industrialised countries. consumption, so necessary for creating both global And to do this, we need to reconfigure not only our and local sustainability, must deal with the methods imaginations, but also the nature of our built by which consumer goods are distributed and environment and social institutions. marketed. Regional shopping centres, as a significant

References

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81 There is even a Sydney suburb - Pagewood - that had its name changed to that of the local shopping centre - Eastgardens. See, Sydney Morning Herald, 6 April 1989, p. 8. 82 Report of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, Rio de Janeiro, 3-14 June 1992, Principal 8, http://www.un.org/documents/conf151/aconf15126-lannex1.htm 83 Agenda 21: Chapter 4 94 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL, CULTURAL, ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY, VOLUME 2

Middleton, P.B.R., (Convenor and Chairman of Citizens for Chatswood Community), letter to L.J. Woodward, Town Clerk, Willoughby Municipality, Chatswood, 8 September 1975, located in Willoughby Library Local Studies Section, Retail Trade – Chatswood Chase file. Miller, Michael, The Bon Marché: Bourgeois culture and the department store, 1869-1920 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1981) Morris, Meaghan, ‘Things To Do With Shopping Centres’ in Susan Sheridan (ed.), Grafts: Feminist Cultural Criticism (London: Verso, 1988) Robbins, Richard H., Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism (Needham Heights MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1999) Spearritt, Peter, ‘Suburban Cathedrals: The rise of the drive-in shopping centre’ in Graeme Davison, Tony Dingle and Seamus O'Hanlon (eds), The Cream Brick Frontier: Histories of Australian suburbia, (Clayton, VIC: Monash Publications in History, Dept. of History, Monash University, 1995) Stearns, Peter N., Consumerism in World History: The global transformation of desire (New York: Routledge, 2001) Teo, Hsu-Ming, 'The Americanisation of romantic love in Australia', in Ann Curthoys and Marilyn Lake (eds.), Connected Worlds: History in Trans-National Perspective, (Canberra: ANU EPress, 2006), pp. 161-183. Voyce, Malcolm, ‘The Privatisation of Public Property: The development of a shopping mall in Sydney and its implications for governance through spatial practices’ in Urban Policy and Research, vol. 21, no. 3, September 2003 Waterhouse, Richard, ‘Popular Culture’ in Phillip Bell and Roger Bell (eds), Americanization and Australia (Sydney: UNSW Press, 1998) Westfield Holdings Ltd., The Westfield Story: the first 40 years (Sydney: Westfield Holdings, 2000) Trade Journals Australian Retailing (Sydney: Australian Council of Retailers), 1967-1973 Inside Retailing (Kings Cross, N.S.W.: Information Australia Group), 1971-2005 The Retail Trader: The Journal of the Retail Traders' Association of N.S.W. (Sydney: The Association), 1921-1963 Web Sites Destiny USA, http://www.destinyusa.com Grist Magazine, Environmental News and Commentary, http://www.grist.org/news/muck/2005/05/20/little-destiny/ United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Division for Sustainable Development, Agenda 21: Chapter 4, http://www.un.org.esa/sustdev/documents/agenda21/english/agenda21chapter4.htm United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Division for Sustainable Development, Johannesburg Plan of Implementation, Chapter III, Changing unsustainable patterns of consumption and production, http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/documents/WSSD_POI_PD/English/POIChapter3.htm United Nations, Report of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, Rio de Janeiro, 3-14 June 1992, Principal 8, http://www.un.org/documents/conf151/aconf15126-lannex1.htm

About the Author Mr Matt Bailey Matt Bailey is studying for his PhD in modern history at Macquarie University. Matt is particularly interested in the history of consumerism and its impact on social and cultural life. His PhD thesis is examining the emergence and proliferation of shopping centres in Sydney, Australia.